We had now before us a voyage of some 3,000 miles down the eastern coast of South America before the Magellan Straits were reached. It was marvellously impressive sailing day after day along the coast-line of a great continent, although at the moment the said coast was sandy and flat, the only diversity being occasional lights at night from some town on the shore. Bahia de Todos os Santos, more generally known simply as Bahia, was our next destination. Some fine Portuguese houses are said to survive from the days when it was the old capital, and it may be remembered as the locality where Robinson Crusoe was engaged in planting tobacco, when he was induced to go on the slave-raiding voyage which led to his best-known adventure. The bay, which runs north and south, extends for twenty-five miles, and the situation of the town on its east side is distinctly fine; part of it has been built on the shore, and part on the top of rising ground immediately above it. The funicular railway which connects the one with the other is to be seen from the sea. [Illustration: FIG. 6. BAHIA DE TODOS OS SANTOS. ] This unfortunately is all that circumstances allow us to record. The anchor was dropped at midday, Wednesday, June 25th, and orders given for luncheon to be served at once, so that we might go on shore as soon as we had got our pratique. The health officer, when he came on board, was found to speak nothing but Portuguese, which made communication difficult; the same had been the case with the pilot at Pernambuco; and as half the vessels visiting those ports are English it might perhaps be suggested, without insular pride, that a smattering of that language, or at least of French, might be desirable in such officials. We produced the bill of health from Pernambuco in ordinary course: this, however, did not satisfy the doctor. He asked for that from St. Vincent, then from Las Palmas, and finally from Falmouth, though we pointed out that, as this had been granted three months ago, it scarcely had a practical bearing on the case: the virgin health of Bahia must, we felt, indeed be immaculate to require such protection. Finally the bill was stamped and passed. Then the officer handed in a marvellous paper of directions given in English, which stated that “if the captain went on shore all boats’ crews were to return immediately to the ship; that no one was to be on shore after 7 p.m.; no fruit was to be bought from hucksters, and none was to be eaten till it had been in a cool place for three days.”